Temporal Architecture

Temporal Architecture documents the latest architectural works designed for temporary use. The list includes pavilions, installations, and pop-up structures with a novel use of materials and cutting-edge design and fabrication processes. The book analyzes the role of these structures in the development of new ideas in architectural design. The relative small scale of the projects allow for forward-thinking concepts to be developed and materialized. Featured architects/designers in Temporal Architecture includes; John Frane, Aaron Neubert, Dora Epstein Jones, Monika Grzymala, Selgascano Architects, Judith Vrancken, Alisa Andrasek, José Sanchez, Zaha Hadid Architects, Directed Research Studio, Loom Studio, Baumgartner + Uriu, Andrew Saunders, Ramiro Díaz Granados, AFJD Studio, Yale School of Architecture, Sus&Hi Office, Dean McMurry, Qastic, Alvin Kung, MDLAB, and SOMA among others.

Speed, acceleration and rapid change characterize our world, and as we design and construct buildings that are to last at least a few decades and sometimes even centuries, how can architecture continue to act as an important cultural signifier? Focusing on how an important nineteenth-century architect addressed the already shifting relation between architecture, time and history, this book offers insights on issues still relevant today-the struggle between imitation and innovation, the definition (or rejection) of aesthetic experience, the grounds of architectural judgment (who decides and how), or fundamentally, how to act (i.e. build) when there is no longer a single grand narrative but a plurality of possible histories. Six drawings provide the foundation of an itinerary through Charles Robert Cockerell’s conception of architecture, and into the depths of drawings and buildings. Born in England in 1788, Cockerell sketched as a Grand Tourist, he charted architectural history as Royal Academy Professor, he drew to build, to exhibit, to understand the past and to learn from it, publishing his last work in 1860, three years before his death. Under our scrutiny, his drawings become thresholds into the nineteenth century, windows into the architect’s conception of architecture and time, complex documents of past and projected constructions, great examples that reveal a kinetic approach to ornamentation, and the depth of architectural representation.

This book presents and develops new reinforcement learning methods that enable fast and robust learning on robots in real-time. Robots have the potential to solve many problems in society, because of their ability to work in dangerous places doing necessary jobs that no one wants or is able to do. One barrier to their widespread deployment is that they are mainly limited to tasks where it is possible to hand-program behaviors for every situation that may be encountered. For robots to meet their potential, they need methods that enable them to learn and adapt to novel situations that they were not programmed for. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a paradigm for learning sequential decision making processes and could solve the problems of learning and adaptation on robots. This book identifies four key challenges that must be addressed for an RL algorithm to be practical for robotic control tasks. These RL for Robotics Challenges are: 1) it must learn in very few samples; 2) it must learn in domains with continuous state features; 3) it must handle sensor and/or actuator delays; and 4) it should continually select actions in real time. This book focuses on addressing all four of these challenges. In particular, this book is focused on time-constrained domains where the first challenge is critically important. In these domains, the agent’s lifetime is not long enough for it to explore the domains thoroughly, and it must learn in very few samples.

Temporal Urban Design: Temporality, Rhythm and Place examines an alternative design approach, focusing on the temporal aesthetics of urban places and the importance of the sense of time and rhythm in the urban environment. The book departs from concerns on the acceleration of cities, its impact on the urban quality of life and the liveability of urban spaces, and questions on what influences the sense of time, and how it expresses itself in the urban environment. From here, it poses the questions: what time is this place and how do we design for it? It offers a new aesthetic perspective akin to music, brings forward the methodological framework of urban place-rhythmanalysis, and explores principles and modes of practice towards better temporal design quality in our cities. The book demonstrates that notions of time have long been intrinsic to planning and urban design research agendas and, whilst learning from philosophy, urban critical theory, and both the natural and social sciences debate on time, it argues for a shift in perspective towards the design of everyday urban time and place timescapes. Overall, the book explores the value of the everyday sense of time and rhythmicity in the urban environment, and discusses how urban designers can understand, analyse and ultimately play a role in the creation of temporally unique, both sensorial and affective, places in the city. The book will be of interest to urban planners, designers, landscape architects and architects, as well as urban geographers, and all those researching within these disciplines. It will also interest students of planning, urban design, architecture, urban studies, and of urban planning and design theory.

An exploration of twentieth-century conceptions of time and their relation to artistic form. In Architectures of Time, Sanford Kwinter offers a critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the "event." He suggests that the closed, controlled, and mechanical world of physics gave way to the approximate, active, and qualitative world of biology as a model of both scientific and metaphysical explanation. Kwinter examines theory of time and space in Einstein's theories of relativity and shows how these ideas were reflected in the writings of the sculptor Umberto Boccioni, the town planning schema of the Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and the writings of Franz Kafka. He argues that the writings of Boccioni and the visionary architecture of Sant'Elia represent the earliest and most profound deployments of the concepts of field and event. In discussing Kafka's work, he moves away from the thermodynamic model in favor of the closely related one of Bergsonian duree, or virtuality. He argues that Kafka's work manifests a coherent cosmology that can be understood only in relation to the constant temporal flux that underlies it.

An elegant and counterintuitive guide to achieving perfect timing Timing is everything. Whether we are making strategic business decisions or the smallest personal choice, we must decide not only what to do, but when to do it. Act too early—or too late—and the results can be disastrous. Based on a 20-year investigation into more than 2,000 timing issues and errors, When presents a single and practical approach for dealing with timing in life and business. Good timing, Albert argues, is not just a matter of luck, intuition, or past experience—all of which may be unreliable—but a skill. He describes that skill and details the tools and methods needed to conduct a successful timing analysis. The book is the first to offer an efficient and comprehensive way to think through any timing issue Filled with dozens of lively stories illustrating good and bad timing in all walks of life—business, warfare, medicine, sports, entertainment and the arts Written by Stuart Albert, one of the foremost timing experts in the world and developer of the first practical, research-based method for turning the skill of timing into a competitive advantage Engaging and counterintuitive, When will show everyone, regardless of the work they do, or the life they live, that "it's all in the timing."

Temporal Regimes provides a theoretical framework for understanding the temporal structures of society; a conceptually rich, empirically nuanced and culturally embodied account of temporal phenomena in contemporary world. What does it imply temporal regimes? How the everyday life as well as the global mobilities coordination requires temporal underpinnings? The answers to these questions mean more than simply understanding the general thesis on acceleration or space-time compression on the one hand; but also, a micro-multiple-localised time experience by gender, class or age, on the other. They also mean understanding in an integrative way the very structural temporalities within the everyday lived, embodied and situated ones. They require both a robust and flexible epistemic analysis considering their material bedrock through political and technological forefront dimensions. Advancing a rigorous, well-grounded theoretical understanding, and offering a useful way to analytically conceptualise the temporal dynamics on our societies, this book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars enquiring a rich set of topics ranging from time and politics, new materialism, conceptual history as well as technology, collective action and social change.

This collection represents the primary reference work for researchers and students in the area of Temporal Reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. Temporal reasoning has a vital role to play in many areas, particularly Artificial Intelligence. Yet, until now, there has been no single volume collecting together the breadth of work in this area. This collection brings together the leading researchers in a range of relevant areas and provides an coherent description of the breadth of activity concerning temporal reasoning in the filed of Artificial Intelligence. Key Features: - Broad range: foundations; techniques and applications - Leading researchers around the world have written the chapters - Covers many vital applications - Source book for Artificial Intelligence, temporal reasoning - Approaches provide foundation for many future software systems · Broad range: foundations; techniques and applications · Leading researchers around the world have written the chapters · Covers many vital applications · Source book for Artificial Intelligence, temporal reasoning · Approaches provide foundation for many future software systems